Chosen
by Stunt Muppet
Summary: Your lord would not have you a slave. Crossover between TF: Prime and Marvel Comics continuity, specifically Liege Maximo. Takes place after the episode "Shadowzone".


"You're awake, then," said a voice from a shadow. "For a time I almost feared for you."

Megatron snapped to attention, pointing his canon towards the sound before he had fully calculated its uncertain source. Combat routines engaged once again, fully shaking off their sleep, sweeping the area for unseen entrances and exits and seeking into the shadows where an enemy could hide.

Nothing. Not even another heat signature. And yet the voice was familiar, though a quick search revealed it had been a long time since last he heard it. No face to match it in his memory, though, nor any record of what was said – only a voice print, half-corrupted by age.

"There is no need for that," the voice started again, behind him this time. He whirled, firing three times into the dark edges of the corridors – but again no opponent greeted him.

It was one of his earlier memories in which the voice reoccurred, never clear but always an echo, as it was now.

"Where are you?" he growled, as the echoes of the voice died out. And the voice had always hid itself in darkness, for he remembered the lightless mining tunnels, and the whisper he had heard in the dead-end chambers that had implored him to look to the surface and the light, to crawl from his tunnels and seize what was his…

"Nowhere, in truth." This time, from one dark corner of the hall, a pair of slim red optics opened from what seemed like a great distance away. Around the optics shadows tangled, forming loops and curls that crept across the walls. "Manifesting fully in your ship would be inconvenient for the both of us. You may fire if you like," the voice added, one shadowy arc seeming to gesture towards Megatron's readied cannon. "if you wish that point proven more conclusively."

Megatron's fist curled. The figure seemed at least incorporeal if not actually a hologram; firing again would only damage the walls. Besides, if there was one thing he would not abide, it was being baited. He kept his weapon trained but did not fire. "Manifesting, you say," he mused aloud. Perhaps someone with transwarp capability? And yet that did not explain the shadows that were even now tracing up towards the ceiling, building on themselves until they seemed to fill the room. "And who are you, exactly, that you cannot show yourself?"

"I am many things." And now there were the suggestions of shapes at the core of the darkness – the glint of light off jagged teeth, and clawed fingers that rested near the mouth, the thoughtful gesture belying their brutal form. "I am your progenitor; I am your guide; I am your purpose. And I am here, Megatron, to reclaim you."

"Nobody _claims_ me."

"Oh? Then tell me, what's that in your spark chamber?"

One hand extended, ever so slightly, and the shadows swept in his direction, flickering across his surface. Beneath his plating motors froze, pistons lurched to a halt, signals died halfway down the motor relays. Even his optics could not refocus; he could only feel as his chamber clicked open, and something, something searing hot, wrapped hard around the shard in his chest.

"The Chaos-Bringer gives no gifts without a price. Did you think there would be no consequences, taking his blood in your own veins?"

"I know what it's capable of," he snarled back, as his vocalizer and optics snapped back into life. He struggled still to move, straining against the shadow's power. "If you hope to frighten me with old stories - "

"I hope only to save you."

And the corridor of the Nemesis seemed to dissolve around him, revealing a vast open space streaked with light. And behind the blackness of the shadow's tendrils he could see – himself, reflected back a hundred thousand times.

Only – not himself. The reflections moved independent of him, in every different direction, and looking among them he found variations, some half-shattered and stumbling, some standing tall in triumph over the ruins of war.

And some, he found as he looked closer, were still entangled in battle; in one fragment he and Optimus fired on each other from opposite sides of the siege walls of Kaon, and in another they tore at each other as the city burned around them, their weapons spent and discarded, until they both succumbed to their wounds before they could reach to deal the killing blow.

"Whole universes turn around you," the dark figure continued. Megatron found he could move again, and glanced up at the shadow – it had grown, now, into a seated silhouette on an immense throne, towering up beyond his field of vision, those slim, sharp hands at rest. "Your choices, your triumphs, they shape the fate of Cybertron itself. And you would give that up to be Unicron's thrall? Even your name – you claimed to cherish your freedom, yet you took the name of a slave."

The scene changed; the fragments of his other lives were blotted out, and only two remained. One of him, so jagged and dark as to be unrecognizable, stood in the shadow of another figure, dark and spindling and aglow with inner fire. His reflection called the second figure "master".

The second reflection he scarcely recognized. His plating had turned dark blue and purple; his movements were fragmented and unpredictable. He stood before an enormous eye, many times as tall as he was, and clutched at his head as if in pain.

And then the image turned, and looked back at him. For a moment he saw through his double's optics, felt his mind in chains and his body bound to the immensity before him.

"I have already lost so many of you to the Dark God – or to my fool of a brother," the shadow went on. "I could not let you surrender to him as well."

Megatron's spark chamber remained open but the shade had withdrawn, offering rather than ordering. "I can make you whole again – without Unicron. I can restore you so you no longer need Dark Energon's poison to provide your power."

The cold glow of the Dark Energon crept afresh through his veins, as if in rejoinder to the figure's claim. To surrender it would mean giving up the army at his absolute control. It would let go of the universal power he had tasted when he had first merged it with his spark. And yet if this dark figure was who he suspected him to be…

"And you would have me serve you instead?"

And the shadow laughed, softly, and the ribbon of shadow caressed the shard that served as his spark. "Oh, no. No, you are far too valuable for that. When there are so few of you left?" The images disappeared, leaving the two alone in the darkness. "No. I would only have you remember me in your hour of triumph."

The tendrils spread, cupping between them a warm white light, shining against the cool violet. And Megatron thought back to the voice again, leading his way out of the mineshafts and whispering from hidden cave-ins and passageways until he was free. And he considered.


End file.
